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Animal Source Foods
Published in Chuong Pham-Huy, Bruno Pham Huy, Food and Lifestyle in Health and Disease, 2022
Chuong Pham-Huy, Bruno Pham Huy
The polemic about selling beef containing hormones or meat hormones was a commercial dispute between the United States, Canada, and the European Union (EU) since 1989 until recently. This ‘beef war’ was due to the use of many growth hormones such as recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), or recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST), which are authorized for beef farming in the United States and Canada, while the EU considers this addition to be harmful for human health and have banned the importation of beef meat made in these two countries (51). In June 2019, the European Union and the United States have reached an agreement on imports of hormone-free beef (52).
Education and abolition
Published in Carlo Alvaro, Raw Veganism, 2020
Furthermore, the livestock sector uses more fresh water than any other sector. Animals consume more water than humans. This sector also pollutes more water than any other sectors. Furthermore, farmers use fertilizers and pesticides that cause the formation of nitrates that leak into the groundwater resulting in negative health effects. Farmers in the USA use recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBTS), hoemones that pollute waters. Its use is prohibited in Europe and many other countries. As a result of these pollutants, aquacultures are negatively affected. Consider that half of the fish that humans consume are produced in those aquacultures systems.
Culture and society
Published in Pamela Mason, Tim Lang, Sustainable Diets, 2017
Increasing output is a way to increase farming income or, more accurately, to try to maintain farmer income. Actually farm incomes are squeezed. In the UK the productivity of dairy cows multiplied by two and a half, from an average of 2,800 litres in 1950 to 7,000 litres in 2010.154 The number of dairy cattle per farm has also risen from 17 to 125 over the same period and dairy farms are producing 18 times as much milk as they were in the 1950s. Selective breeding has contributed, as has the feeding of concentrates and, in some countries, the injection of bovine somatotropin (BST). However, the animal’s body may be reaching the end of its biological capacity, beyond which its welfare could be threatened. Increased risk of disease such as mastitis, anaemia and lameness, where the animal’s hind legs cannot bear the pressure of the enlarged udder, is a problem.122 While the natural lifespan of a cow is about 20 years, it is today quite common for them to be sent to slaughter at six or seven years, either because their yield is no longer adequate or they are worn out. Similarly with broiler (purpose-grown meat) chickens: in the EU the industry produces approximately 6 bn broilers each year, of which approximately 890 m are produced in the UK.155 In the UK, the bulk of the chicken-meat production comes from flocks of more than 100,000 birds that are kept in large dimly lit sheds and are fed and watered automatically. The broiler has been specially bred to put on weight quickly. What used to take 60 days in the 1960s for a bird to reach market weight now takes about 34 days.156 This places great strain on the birds’ legs, and during the last one to two weeks of the fattening period the birds may have bone deformities that hamper their ability to walk and cause chronic pain. Turkeys are subject to the same deformities if intensively farmed. This may affect the quality of the meat for the consumer and certainly can cause suffering for the birds (see below).
Associations of Current, Childhood, and Adolescent Milk Intake with Serum Insulin-like Growth Factor (IGF)-1 and IGF Binding Protein 3 Concentrations in Adulthood
Published in Nutrition and Cancer, 2019
Vishnu Srinivasan, Katharina Nimptsch, Sabine Rohrmann
Previous studies have suggested that high intake of milk may be related to an increased risk of breast and prostate cancers (9). Irrespective of whether cows have been treated with recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST) for milk production, cow’s milk contains IGF-1, which is structurally identical to human IGF-1(2,10). Thus, it has been hypothesized that milk intake may increase the risk of cancer by causing an elevation in circulating IGF-1 levels. However, the physiological basis for this hypothesis is uncertain since IGF-1 in milk undergoes proteolysis in the upper gastrointestinal tract. Other suggestions are that calcium and specific essential amino acids, such as arginine and lysine, abundant in milk, could upregulate hepatic IGF-1 production (11,12).